Wyoming Education Association

Spring 2018

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13 Legislative Wrap Up Legislative Action The 64th Session of the Wyoming Legislature wrapped up late on Thursday, March 15, amid tense negotiations between the Senate and the House. The Senate leadership arrived at the temporary capitol with the intent of making drastic cuts to school funding. Throughout the interim, some members of the Senate portrayed Wyoming schools as failing and over-funded. Some Senate members supported attacks on our constitution, attempting to undermine students' fundamental right to education, and corrupting the separation of power between the branches of government. Fortunately, our friends in the legislature, and YOU our members, rallied to defeat these bills, which would have created an inequitable and inadequate educational system in Wyoming. On Saturday, March 10, the last official day of the session, negotiations on final bills resulted in an agreement that money would be appropriated from the Strategic Investment Planning Account (SIPA) to permanently fund major maintenance for Wyoming's K-12 schools. The capital construction bill, HB0194 - State funded capital construction (Sub #1), includes a guarantee of .45% of prior 5-year market average value of the Permanent Wyoming Mineral Trust Fund, which is approximately $45 million per year, beginning in fiscal year 2021. This bill also includes several statewide capital construction projects, from coal haul roads to state office buildings. Delicate negotiations resulted in an agreement between the House and Senate leadership that if HB0194 passed with the SIPA guarantee and the low interest loans for community colleges and the University of Wyoming, HB0140 - School finance amendments-4 would pass the House with the proposed cuts to education. Negotiations were not completed in time on March 10 for the final bills to be drafted and passed in each house, so legislators were forced to reconvene on Wednesday and Thursday of the following week to hash out the final details. Remaining on the schedule was the passage of HB0140, School Finance Amendments -4 in both houses, passage of HB0194 - State funded capital construction (Sub #1), overrides of the Governor's budget vetoes, as well as overriding any bills vetoed by the Governor. The House passed HB0194 and sent it over to the Senate, where it also passed but was held unsigned by Senate Vice President Von Flatern as the Senate awaited House action on HB0140. Since HB0140 held the education cuts, WEA and other education associations lobbied hard to kill the bill. We were able to get enough legislators to agree to vote "no" on the bill, but then the Senate sent the message that HB0194 – containing hundreds of millions of dollars in statewide capital construction projects – would not be signed if HB0140 died. Many legislators felt they could not risk losing the construction projects and were forced to change their votes at the last minute. HB0140 survived, which means cuts to the K-12 funding model of approximately $7.6 million for FY 2019 and $19.4 million for FY 2020 will be implemented. However, because of the efforts of the education lobby, including WEA, the reductions will take place over the next three years. Our thanks go out to Senator Chris Rothfuss for amending the bill on the Senate floor to gradually implement the cuts. The largest driver of the cuts is recalculating the Average Daily Membership (ADM) at a district level, instead of the current method of doing so at the building level. Another reduction will be in the funding of groundskeepers, which results in a reduction of $3.1 million statewide. The $25 per ADM for assessment (typically used for MAP tests) has been eliminated, resulting in a $2.3 million dollar cut across the state. The final reduction in HB0140 will be the cap on special education spending. Future state expenditures for special education will be capped at the 2018 expenditure level. Districts will apply to the state for reimbursement, but the pot of money available to cover the costs will not reflect the actual special education expenditures. The Senate has cloaked the cuts in areas that don't seem to hurt kids, but we all know that when the block grant is reduced, services Tammy Schroeder WEA Government Relations Director tschroeder@wyoea.org

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